Poverty, by America with Matthew Desmond and Lauren Collins

A conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond on his latest book Poverty, by America, which tackles inequality in the richest country on earth.

Filmed on 18/3/2025 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.

Why does poverty persist in the richest nation on earth? Acclaimed sociologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted, Matthew Desmond returns with Poverty, by America, a searing indictment of how the wealthiest Americans sustain inequality at the expense of the poor. Through history, research, and original reporting, Desmond exposes the systems that exploit and exclude, while offering a bold vision for poverty abolition and collective belonging.

The conversation was moderated by Lauren Collins.

About the speakers:

Dr. Matthew Desmond is a Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and Founder of The Eviction Lab, which created the first national dataset on evictions in America. He is the author of five books, including Poverty, by America (2023) and Evicted (2016). His work, praised by The New Yorker and Esquire, examines why poverty persists in America. Desmond writes for The New York Times Magazine and other outlets. A past MacArthur Fellow, his research focuses on urban sociology, poverty, race, and ethnography.

Lauren Collins began contributing to the New Yorker in 2003 and became a staff writer in 2008. Her subjects have included Michelle Obama, Donatella Versace, the graffiti artist Banksy, Emmanuel Macron, the refugee crisis, and equal pay. Since 2015 she has been based in Paris, covering stories mainly from France. She is the author of When in French: Love in a Second Language, which the Times named as one of its 100 Notable Books of 2016. She is working on a second book, about a coup d’état perpetrated by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, and its effects over the past hundred and twenty years.

Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.